Many industries deal with the application of color to manufactured products and other objects. In these industries, it is often a difficult challenge to effectively define and communicate object color. For example, in the automotive finish industry, it is difficult to match and verify the finish of a car for purposes of quality control in manufacturing, auto body repair, identifying and matching replacement parts, and other similar activities. In the commercial printing industry, it is difficult to define a color and predict how the color will appear when applied to objects having different surface properties (e.g., different paper types). Many other industries experience similar problems including, for example, the commercial paint industry, the architectural paint industry, the clothing/textile industry, etc.
These challenges are addressed to some extent using comparison samples. Each comparison sample has a single color applied to a single surface type. A user verifies or matches a color applied to an unknown surface by manually comparing the unknown surface to different comparison samples and finding the best match. For example, before painting a room, a homeowner may take a number of paint chips from a hardware store and manually select the chip that best matches the other features of the room. In another example, before refinishing a car, an auto body shop may compare the car's original finish to a number of finished plates and select a new finish by determining which plate best matches the original. Often, the process of comparing involves viewing the comparison samples in a number of different orientations and ambient lighting situations.
Although comparison samples can be effective in the hands of a skilled user, they also have certain drawbacks. First, it is costly to produce, distribute and store comparison samples. For example, auto body shops, hardware stores, etc., expend considerable resources purchasing and stocking comparison plates for all surface types. In addition, the number of colors for comparison is strictly limited by the number of available comparison samples. Accordingly, to obtain the best comparison possible, there is no way to avoid acquiring and stocking a large number of samples.